by Sonia Nova
So they were somewhere cold that wouldn’t suffocate them the moment they stepped outside. Well, they couldn’t ask for much more.
If only the computer was able to tell him their location. A cold, snowy oxygen environment could exist anywhere from Earth to the other side of the universe.
And since they had been caught up in the beginnings of the Fold Drive… they could be anywhere between Earth and Inea. That meant anywhere in pretty much the entire universe.
“Dammit,” Zeriq swore again, rubbing at his temples. After all that movement, the painful headache he had experienced when he first woke up was coming back.
He might as well try to wake up the female and see if she had any insight on where they were. At least, he could tell her they were safe for now. If safe meant barely alive in a tiny, mechanically-failing metal box in a snowdrift.
With a hand on each of her shoulders, he gave her a gentle shake. She moaned again and he could see her eyes moving behind her eyelids.
“Wake up,” he said. “We landed.”
“Inea…?” she asked softly, her eyes not opening.
Zeriq let out a grim laugh. “Don’t think so,” he answered. “I don’t see any terraformed jungle or Va’ii towers out the window. But who knows, we might be close.”
She sighed, her dark brown eyes fluttering open. With her gaze directed straight at him, Zeriq was suddenly hyperaware of the heat of her small shoulders beneath his hands. He jerked them away and straightened back into his own seat.
“Where are we?” the female asked, pushing herself up on her elbows. It seemed like her muscles ached just as much as his, because she grimaced and immediately collapsed back down into her seat again.
Zeriq shrugged. “No idea. The shuttle’s computers are dead. But the environmental analysis says there’s a breathable atmosphere out there.”
The idea seemed to give the female new energy. She sat up all the way and managed to stay upright this time. Zeriq watched as she took in the view outside the cockpit window.
Snow on snow.
Her expression became grim. “What’s out there?” she asked.
“You know everything I know,” Zeriq said. “The sensors only go so far. It’s cold and there’s oxygen, at least for about a mile around us.”
The female nodded slowly. Zeriq could tell they both knew there was only one way to find out for sure.
They had to go out there.
CHAPTER 5
HAZEL
Hazel could still barely believe this was really happening. Her head swam, her mouth was dry, and her left hip felt like it might have a giant bruise… but she was alive.
For now.
“You okay to walk?” the soldier asked.
Hazel just looked at him for a long moment. When she had seen him on the E’lania, her instincts had told her to stick with him. If she had gone to a different platform, the Krezlians might have shot her, but she also might have been able to get on a shuttle in time and be back on Earth by now.
Had she made the right choice?
She looked down. It didn’t matter now. She had to do her best to continue to survive in this very real, very horrible situation. Plus, out of all the people – aliens – she could be stuck with right now, this strong and apparently levelheaded Ezak-X wasn’t the worst choice.
“What’s your name?” she asked suddenly, clearly catching the soldier by surprise. The Ezak-X were known for being unfamiliar with customs of pretty much all the Alliance races, so she realized she had to be the one to initiate the introductions.
“Zeriq,” he said.
When he didn’t return the question, Hazel wasn’t surprised. “I’m Hazel,” she said. “I figured since we’re going to be stuck together for the foreseeable future, I should have something to call you.”
He nodded, turning away from her.
“Let’s go,” he said, wasting no time as he pushed aside the deflated plastic of the airbag between him and the door on his side of the cockpit. He opened the door and cold air began to fill the cockpit.
There was no wind, but within seconds, the slow seeping cold made goose bumps rise on Hazel’s skin. Thankfully, she was still wearing the scarf and sweater that she had brought with her on the E’lania. If only she had a coat and the matching knit hat that was in her suitcase in her room on the ship.
Though, she realized, she might never get that hat back – or anything else she had packed for Inea. At least she had her bag with her tablet and wallet, as useless as those things were right about now.
She adjusted the scarf so it was covering her ears and mouth and climbed out of the shuttle behind Zeriq. Cold crawled up her legs as she dipped into the icy crystals. The snow reached to about halfway up his calves, which meant it was at least as deep as her knees.
A shiver ran along her spine and she wrapped her arms around herself for warmth.
“How are we supposed to walk out here?” she asked, her voice muffled through her scarf. “Without snowshoes or skis?”
“Step in my footsteps,” Zeriq answered before turning and starting to walk away. As if it was that easy.
Hazel gingerly followed behind Zeriq with her hands inside her sleeves and her arms around her body. She used the compacted snow his footsteps left behind as a guide, taking large steps as she trailed behind him.
They made their way up a slight slope, some three hundred feet from the shuttle, until the land leveled off into endless fields of snow again.
They both paused and looked around.
Even though there was no wind, the freezing air hurt as she breathed in and her nose was starting to feel numb. She knew they would have to find shelter soon, even if that meant just going back into the shuttle. At least, she couldn’t withstand the cold. Zeriq seemed just fine in his Alliance military regulation suit.
“Do you see that over there?”
Hazel followed Zeriq’s gaze to the horizon to their left. Instead of just snow against gray sky, there was a line of bluish gray… something between the snow and the horizon.
“I think those are trees. A forest.” Zeriq started to walk toward the trees. “That could mean food. Maybe even people.”
“A forest?” Hazel asked, hurrying to keep up with his long gait. “Is it possible that we actually crash landed back onto Earth?” Her heart beat quickly, but she tried not to let herself hope too much.
“It’s possible,” Zeriq said, not slowing down. “But since we flew into the Fold Drive, we could be anywhere.”
Anywhere.
After the day she’d had, something had to go right. Maybe they really were back on Earth. Maybe they would stumble across some cabin where a family was staying on vacation, and they would find out they were just in… Alaska or Canada. Maybe she would be back in her apartment by nightfall, explaining her adventure to her family and wrapped in blankets…
Hazel accidentally put her foot down in the snow beside Zeriq’s footstep and tripped as she sunk into the snow.
“Crap,” she muttered as a shiver traveled along her body from the chill of the snow. Her hands had touched the frozen ground, and she could feel the tips of her fingers prickle from the cold.
Zeriq turned around at the sound and offered a hand to help pull her out. She scrambled back onto her feet and into the snow his footsteps had already compacted, brushing the snow off her clothes.
Her fingers prickled and her whole body quivered. The cold was getting to her, but she shook her head, trying to stay alert.
“You’re freezing.” Zeriq frowned. “You need to get back to the shuttle?”
Back to the shuttle? “No… No, I’m fine,” Hazel said, trying to keep her wits. The shuttle wouldn’t help them, but if they found a cabin or something here, they would be alright.
Zeriq’s frown deepened, as if he was ready to argue, but Hazel cut him off. “I’m fine. Really. But unless we keep moving, I will freeze.”
She could see his mouth purse into a thin line, clearly in disapproval, bu
t he turned back toward the trees without another word. Hazel trudged behind him, taking more care with her steps this time.
“This looks like Varq,” Zeriq said after a moment as they neared the tree line. Hazel looked up, squinting to see the trees. It definitely was a forest, but one like she had never seen before. Blue, spindly trees grew thick and close together.
“Varq?”
“A military planet. My unit trained there for a few months.”
“Is it… Close to the solar system?”
She watched Zeriq’s shoulders shrug from behind. “Depends on where you’re looking from. Andromeda galaxy.”
Hazel’s heart fell. The Andromeda galaxy was over two million light years away from Earth. That meant about a month’s journey for most ships using Ghelian Speed Drive technology.
“Are you sure that’s where we are?”
“No,” Zeriq said. “But Varq had a lot of snow and a species of blue trees. Never in a whole forest like this, though.”
They kept walking, and Hazel rubbed her arms in an attempt to stay warm. It wasn’t really working though, and her teeth clattered in her mouth. But they had to keep going. They had to find something.
Within a few minutes, they were at the edge of the woods. The pale blue trees were easily fifty feet tall at their shortest, skinny, with snow in between them. It was an eerie sight.
And though the trees vaguely reminded her of birches on Earth, Hazel realized that she had to let go of any hope that they had landed on her home planet. This forest was completely alien.
The reality of her situation hit her like a ton of bricks. Tears began to stream down her cheeks, warming the skin before they too turned cold. Her sobs came out ugly and choked, uncontrollable.
Zeriq stood, watching her uncomfortably. She felt momentarily bad that he had to see her like this, but after everything that had happened, she needed to cry.
It felt like there was nothing else she could do but cry. Her knees buckled beneath her and she collapsed into the snow, her face in her hands. She no longer cared about the piercing cold or the numbness of her hand. The tears just kept coming.
Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck.
“This is hopeless,” she sobbed into her hands. “We’re going to die out here.”
“Hazel,” Zeriq said, his voice serious and stern. It was the first time he had said her name and it distracted her just enough for her to take a deep breath. The sobs slowed. “This could be Varq, and if it is, there are plenty of military settlements. Even in the snowy areas at the poles. We need to keep moving.”
Hazel looked up at him, knowing she must look like a mess. “Just leave me here.”
He frowned. “You need to keep moving or else you’ll freeze,” he said.
Hazel shook her head miserably, but she knew he was right. Hadn’t she just told him as much a moment earlier? The cold of the snow was now seeping through her jeans. And while the situation did seem hopeless, she didn’t want to freeze to death. To never again see her family.
“You’re right,” she said after a while, taking a few more breaths to calm herself. “Okay. I’m done. I’m getting up.”
She stood up slowly, shaking the snow off of her clothes and pulling her scarf back up over her face. Her fingers were now completely numb, but she rubbed her frozen hands together and blew on them for extra warmth.
Just as she was trying to get herself ready to go, something red and brown caught the side of her eye. A small something beneath a tree, less than a hundred feet away.
“Do you see that?” She pointed at the speck of color with her hand.
Zeriq seemed to notice it too, and he took a few steps toward it, squinting into the distance.
“I see it,” he said.
Hope blossomed in Hazel’s chest for the first time. Finally, something other than snow and trees. They started to move toward the speck of brownish red color, but as they got closer, Hazel could see that it was the corpse of some kind of an animal.
Her heart sunk at the sight. That wasn’t what she had hoped for, but at least it told them something about where they were. There was life on the planet; that was certain. Although perhaps it wasn’t the kind of life Hazel would’ve hoped for.
They stood in front of the little creature in silence. Hazel didn’t know what else to call it, because she had definitely never seen anything else like it on Earth.
If she had to compare it to an Earth animal, maybe it was like a large lizard, but… with fur. It had a long, flat body and small legs on either side. Holes punctured its body like something very large had gnawed at it with giant teeth, and bright green liquid stained the snow beneath it. Blood?
The realization made Hazel gag. She turned away, waiting to throw up, but the nausea passed.
“Did they have animals like this on Varq?” she asked quietly.
“No,” Zeriq answered just as quietly after a moment’s pause. “Definitely not.”
The silence hung heavy between them as the truth of their situation sunk in. Maybe, Hazel thought, they had both known already that they weren’t on Earth, or Varq, or any other planet they knew. But neither of them had wanted to admit it.
“We need… We need to find the people – whoever lives here,” Hazel said, tears filling her eyes again. Instead of hopelessness, the tears were now accompanied by an intense feeling of anger.
What did she do to deserve this? How had the E’lania and the Alliance military failed to protect the ship? Why the hell were the Krezlians attacking Earth ships in the first place? And where was the Alliance now? Why hadn’t someone tracked their shuttle and followed them here?
“I’m going to find the nearest settlement,” she said, feeling resolute. “So we can actually contact the Alliance. And my family – my family needs to know I’m okay.” For now, she thought. Okay for now.
“No,” Zeriq said, raising an eyebrow.
“What?” Hazel said, her voice rising in disbelief. “I wasn’t asking for permission.” She started to move forward, painfully slowly, as she didn’t have Zeriq’s footsteps to walk in.
Two large, warm hands gripped her on either side of her ribcage and pulled her back. As the warmth of his chest made contact with body, she suddenly realized just how cold she was, and a shiver traveled through her entire being. She struggled against Zeriq’s grip, but he easily held her in place and turned her around to face him, not letting go.
“You asshole!” she spat out, the word surprising her. She didn’t usually swear, and especially not directly at someone else. But she also wasn’t usually stuck on a planet with a strange alien who wouldn’t leave her alone to do what she wanted.
“Let go! You said yourself that Varq had settlements in snowy areas. This planet could be the same. There could be a town just beyond our sight.” The anger in her voice turned into near pleading.
“If I let go, will you stay here?” Zeriq asked calmly.
“No!” she answered automatically, pulling against his iron grip.
“If you go off on your own like that,” he continued in the same infuriatingly calm voice, “you’ll die. I can already feel that your body temperature has lowered and you are shivering. What we need to do now is get back to the shuttle.”
“If we find a settlement, we’ll have somewhere better to stay than a shuttle,” she protested, but the argument started to sound less than smart, even to her ears. Who was to say there was a settlement? What if there wasn’t?
Zeriq tilted his head and looked at her with a curious expression. She just frowned back at him.
“What?” she snapped at last when he wouldn’t say anything.
“You work for the Alliance, right?” She nodded. It was technically true. “Is it your first day, or what?”
Hazel blinked. “What do you mean?”
“If you’d been through initial Alliance training, you would know that there’s a protocol when stranded. You stay by your stranded ship, turn on the emergency beacon, contact the Alliance if your comm i
s working, and you don’t leave. We’ve already gone far enough.”
Hazel went limp in his hands, the anger flooding from her. His strength easily held her up. Zeriq was right. She was letting her emotions get the best of her when there was clearly a better way of doing things. A better way than running through the snow away from their shuttle.
She shook off his hands, her changed expression probably convincing him that she wouldn’t run.
“Actually, yes, this is basically my first day,” she said, not looking him in the eye. “I worked for the Agency of Intergalactic Affairs on Earth before, in the Communications Department. Today, I was on the E’lania to start my Alliance training on Inea once we got there. And then, if I pass all my tests in a few years, I’ll become a–”
“You’re a trainee?” Zeriq interrupted.
“Well, yeah,” Hazel said with a shrug.
Zeriq cursed, pressing a palm against his face. For the first time, his expression betrayed his unease with the whole situation.
“What’s wrong with that?” She frowned at him.
Zeriq gritted his teeth, clearly struggling with his emotions.
“What’s wrong with that is that this means that no one is coming for you. At least, not if anyone ranked higher than you is missing as well. And you know how important I rank on the Alliance’s radar? About as important as a missing screw. You’re a trainee and I’m an Ezak-X, a second-class citizen.”
Hazel stared at him, the words sinking in.
“Nobody is coming to look for us,” he spat finally.
That’s not true, Hazel wanted to protest. Of course, they will! The Alliance protects its own. But she knew what he meant. They were low priority on a ship full of passengers that were probably more high profile than they were. Plus, any missing passengers were most likely going to be assumed to be dead, or…
“Okay then,” she said, her tone resigned. “Let’s follow protocol and go back to the shuttle. I can look at the communication systems and see if there’s anything I can do. I am freezing, anyway.”
As if on command, a shiver wracked through her body once more. Somehow, it felt like she had gotten more used to the cold. Her teeth were no longer clattering. But at the same time, she could hardly even feel her fingers, so it was probably her body temperature lowering, just as Zeriq had said. And that wasn’t a good sign.
